Wings
by Gryphon icefire 98
Summary: All my life I spent blindly searching the horizon for the gift of the goddess. It is only now as I lie here dying that I can see what was right in front of my face the entire time; I had the gift of the goddess all along. I was just too blind to see it.
1. Chapter 1

Wings

People called us strange. Strange, weird, different, abnormal. It was not so much that they were calling us strange, it was more like they didn't know what to think when they saw us together. We were exact opposites. We were best friends.  
>That was years ago now. Way back before we had ever heard of SOLDIER, or ShinRa, or mako, or degradation, or even Midgar. One thing we had heard about, however, were angels.<br>I knew an angel, once. He was my best friend. He was always so kind, so innocent, so genuinely sweet, that I knew he was not of this world. This filthy planet could never give birth to something so pure, so wonderful.  
>I spent the majority of my life searching for the 'gift of the goddess'. I find it odd, that as I sit here dying, I can see the truth. I had the gift of the goddess all along. Most of the time it was right in front of my eyes, only an arms length away. It was with me constantly, yet I was blinded by jealousy and hate and so could not recognize it. Only once my angel left could I see the truth. The angel had been sent by the goddess to help me on my way. My literal guardian angel, in more ways than one. My angel was my best friend for a good decade, and even after I denounced him, letting our friendship die, he still cared.<br>People say that to get the best taste out of wine or cheese, you have to let it age. I've never been patient. I always wanted what I wanted, when I wanted it. Maybe if I had waited, our friendship would have gotten stronger too, like the taste of the dumbapple juice did after being left out in the sun for a week.  
>Long story short, my angel started growing more distant from me, spending time with other people, and I'll admit it now, years after the fact, that I was dead jealous. I missed my angel. A lot. Also, I was furious that my angel seemed to be friendly with that silver-haired freak. I hated that man. He had never needed to work for anything, always had everything he ever wanted; Hell, the bastard even had a fan club. A frickin' fan club. And on top of that, he was stronger than my angel and I combined.<br>So I pretended to be nice to the silver haired bastard too, and for a while my angel was happier. And then the freak training session happened, degradation started, and the shit hit the fan.  
>I got a wing. Jet black, sprouting out of my left shoulder, with a weird kink or extra joint in it. And I could fly. I was both horrified and euphoric. I was finally better than Sephiroth in some way, and I was at the same level as my angel. No, more than that. I was greater than my angel, or so I thought.<br>And then I left and my angel didn't follow me. We were apart for the first time in years, and it hurt. I guess the goddess got a bit upset with him, though, like guardian angels weren't supposed to leave their charges, 'cause he showed up again, and turned his back on everything he believed in. For me. It felt wonderful at the time, in two ways. First, because I felt like I had this incredible control over him, and second, because a small part of me that was still that innocent little Banoran boy was glad someone cared.  
>And he died. My angel went and died on me. Or rather, he made his protege kill him, after seeing me supposedly die. And even then, I was glad, because I had power over him still, even when I was supposedly dead.<br>And now I sit here, slumped against a wall, with not even enough strength to hold my sword. It's pathetic. I'm pathetic. The 'gift of the goddess'... I couldn't even realize what it was until any chance of obtaining it was long gone.  
>But I can understand now, far too late. The gift of the goddess... My gift from the goddess... My angel. My guardian angel, the one who befriended me so long ago, one day amongst the apple trees... The trees that are burned now, dead as my angel is.<br>He literally was an angel. He even had the wing of one. On the right side, no unnatural kinks, only a pure white angel wing. Fitting, really.  
>People always called us strange, different, abnormal, and they were right. We ended up as monsters. They said our friendship was impossible, unrealistic, and that it just didn't make sense, and once more, they were right. It didn't make sense, but it worked. We were exact opposites; one a rich kid, the other a poor woman's son. If i was a forest fire, out of control and raging, then he was the rain that cooled my temper. If I was lightning, he was the earth that absorbed my deadly fire and channeled it so that bystanders would escape harm. I was electricity, and he was the conductor that carried my charge safely from one spot to another without himself being incinerated. We were exact opposites. We were best friends... My angel and I… My 'gift of the goddess'…<br>My Angeal.

A/N: Hey, if anyone is actually reading this, I have a second chapter/omake thing already written. However, before I post it, I want to know if anyone actually cares. A review or pm would be nice...


	2. Chapter 2

Wings part 2  
>One day, when Angeal was ten and I was barely eleven, my angel and I went exploring. It was a hot day, and Angeal's mother had made sure we each had a full waterskin of dumbapple juice to take with us. We walked for a while, and stumbled upon a little spring-fed pond, about a hundred feet across. It sloped down gently on one side and was nice and sandy on our feet, and deliciously cold. The other side was all reeds and cat-tails, and after swimming for a bit, we went frog hunting.<p>

Frogs are slippery things, and we didn't catch many. What happened more often was one of us would pounce on one, just to have it hop and swim away a split second before we caught it. In the end, our clothes were filthy and sopping wet, and it was terrific.

After that, we sat down under a tree together because I was afraid of getting sunburned again, and we joked for a bit about how Angeal was lucky because he tanned, but I had to get burned before I would. We fell asleep there, between one word and the next, and awoke to a flash of lightning and the crack of thunder.

It was pouring, and we were soaked to the skin by the time we woke up. It was almost pitch black, and we had hiked a few miles in the morning. I didn't think any of that through though, because back then I was absolutely terrified of storms, and in a minute I was bolting back in the direction we came from, Angeal chasing after me, calling for me to slow down. I couldn't though, and I kept running until I was exhausted, wet leaves and branches slapping me in the face and arms and everywhere else, and I eventually fell to my knees crying because I was lost and I was stuck in the middle of a storm at night and I was scared and I had lost track of Angeal a while ago.

After a few minutes, I got up and wiped my face, because I realized that crying wouldn't do anything. I got up and started walking again, in what I hoped was the right direction, trying not to jump at every crack of thunder and flash of lightning.

The storm calmed down after a bit, and so did I. I eventually ran straight into Angeal, who had been looking for me for a while, and there was lots of hugging and the like. The storm decided it wanted to torture us a bit more though, and it started hailing, and the thunder and lightning came back.

We somehow found our way back home, and almost flew to Angeal's house. When his mother answered the door and swept us inside I almost died of happiness, and she waited to talk at us for scaring her until Angeal and I had dry clothes on, and we each were sipping at a cup of hot cocoa, and we forgot that we had left a waterskin of dumbapple juice underneath the tree by the pond in our haste to get home.

At least, we forgot until we went exploring again a week or so later and happened upon the same spring-fed pond. It was a wickedly hot day, as usual, and we were both parched. We only had the one waterskin between us, seeing as I left the other one under the tree. We went swimming again, and sat down underneath the same tree to dry off, and I jumped right back up with a yelp because I sat on something soft and squishy. Angeal looked at me and burst out laughing, and dragged the waterskin from last week out from me. I sat back down with a bump, and yelled at Angeal a bit because I had been genuinely _surprised,_ not _scared,_ and he was laughing at me. He apologized, we both laughed, and I realized that we were both still thirsty and I dared Angeal to drink some of it, because I'd read about something called 'apple cider' that people on another continent made with regular apple juice. He did, and dared me to do the same thing. We started walking back, passing the waterskin back and forth as we did so, because it actually tasted pretty good, and we wanted to improve it a bit and then sell some like lemonade.


End file.
